Infectious Diseases conference concludes in Manipal

Infectious Diseases conference concludes in Manipal

Mangalore Today News Network

Manipal, Aug 26, 2017: A 2-day international conference on Infectious Diseases organized by Manipal McGill Center for Infectious Diseases (MACID) along with Department of Medicine, Kasturba Medical College Manipal, McGill Global Health Programs and TMA Pai endowment Chair in Translational epidemiology concluded; with deliberations and discussions a whole gamut of issues related to infectious diseases was tackled. Detection, diagnosis, outbreak, investigation and other related matters came up from speakers both from India and overseas.

This  conference, attended by close to 200 faculty members, PG students and researchers, was inaugurated by Dr H Vinod Bhat, Vice Chancellor, Manipal University. He hoped that in coming years, Manipal McGill Center for infectious diseases would take on advocacy and policy issues to have the needed impact on reducing infectious diseases mortality in India. Guest of honor Dr Poornima Baliga said she was happy that a conference of this nature was being held in Manipal andexpected the outcome to be beneficial in many ways.

Prof Chandrasekar, Chief of Infectious Diseases from Wayne State University, Detroit, gave the key note address on recent advances in the diagnostics of fungal infections for earlier diagnosis to reduce mortality.  Dr Madhukar Pai from McGill University, Montreal, spoke about the need for an Essential Diagnostics List. Such a list could be helpful in improving patient care, helping detect outbreaks, increasing affordability of tests, reducing out-of-pocket expenses for tests, reducing antibiotic abuse, improving regulation and quality of diagnostic tests, strengthening accreditation and quality of laboratories, improving supply chain, and guiding the R&D of new diagnostic tools.

 The World Health Organization (WHO) has begun the process of developing an Essential Diagnostics List, similar to WHO’s work on Essential Medicines List. Once the WHO EDL is published, it will give countries like India a much-needed impetus to develop national lists of essential diagnostics.

A panel of Infectious Diseases experts led by Dr Chakrapani M, Associate Dean, KMC Mangalore deliberated on the problem of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and the role of diagnostic stewardship and strategies of antimicrobial stewardship to overcome this crisis. Earlier Dr George M Varghese spoke on the challenges of management of resistant Gram negative infections prevailing in India and cautioned about the limited pipeline of drugs against Gram negative infections

Dr MomarNdao from McGill University, Montreal, the Director of National Reference Laboratory for parasitic diseases, Canada, spoke on diagnosis of parasitic diseases and the increased incidence of deadly parasitic disease strongyloidosis in individuals with compromised immunity and the need for screening and early diagnosis.

In a key note address, Dr Padmini Srikantiah, from Center for Disease Control, USA’s Global Diseases Detection program, who investigated the Muzzafarpur “Litchi” induced hypoglycemic encephalopathy outbreak in Muzaffarpur, India spoke on outbreak investigation emphasizing the need for a systematic approach in investigating all outbreaks to prevent such events from recurring.

While Dr Rajeev Soman, ID consultant from P D Hinduja hospital gave the overview of management of infections in patients with hardware in bones and joints, Dr Binila Chacko, Professor from Christian Medical College, Vellore spoke on infections in ICU patients who have received ventilatory life support. Dr Rajeev Soman and Dr Sanjay Poojarigave lectures on non-AIDS issues in the management of HIV, understanding HIV resistance upon treatment and nuances of their management.